What would you do if you were president of UL for a day?

By Seamus Toomey

This was a question asked of UL students during a survey last semester. It’s a fun idea and has provided some interesting insights into what you the students want from the SU and C&S.

So what would you guys do as president for a day, well from lengthening your term and becoming a dictator to unmasking the reptilian overlords you the students had some pretty interesting answers.

The more conservative and probably most useful (as well as most boring) answers included:

better facilities/equipment
More sociable training times
Sponsorship for the Wolves brand
Inter UL competitions (ULympics anyone?)
More equal financial support
Equipment sharing.

So what are they going to do about this, what are C&S going to do?

They’re getting you presidency of course, All of you!

Ok not really but what they are doing is trying to incorporate all of these things to make C&S better for you and them. Sponsorship for the Wolves brand is the best example, if we get sponsorship then we get more money which we can spend bettering clubs and societies and funding your activities.

So why don’t we already have this?

Well there are a couple of problems, for one not every Club or Society uses the Wolves brand, another problem is we have to actually advertise the sponsor successfully.

Now there is a solution but it requires cooperation between C&S admin and the members. So what am I proposing, I’m saying let’s use the Wolves logo more often.

OK so I can hear the UL Vikings (American Football) shouting at me already but hear me out.

First off you can keep your name Vikings, even keep your logo, but just use the wolves’ logo more often and its sponsorship along with it. If we can ensure that all clubs and societies use the logo, sponsorship won’t see one society advertising to a couple of hundred people they’ll see 70 clubs and societies advertising to thousands.

Now that sounds much more appealing to them but what’s in it for us? Well that’s easy this way we get another thing we asked for, equal support. If C&S get one lump sum for sponsorship of all clubs and socs then they can spread that money evenly.

The alternative is only a few clubs such as GAA, Soccer and Rugby get sponsorship (clubs that already get massive funding) and smaller clubs that don’t have enough publicity get nothing.

Ok so now we’ve got our money what do we do with it? Well what else do you think; we’re going to buy loads of stuff like equipment and facilities! If we can acquire more facilities or at the very least accessibility to more facilities we can hold more activities for our ever growing range of clubs and socs. So that’s another two now we’ve got 4 out of the 6.

Equipment sharing and inter UL competitions. Both of these are pretty easy in my opinion, the only barriers are possible insurance issues. After that it’s just a matter of saying “hey everybody, scavenger hunt, first one to bring me back 3 street cones, a trolley and a Garda hat get this swanky UL hoody”…or you know maybe a nice friendly soccer, rugby, badminton and chess tournament to see who really is the King of Clubs.

My point is, some things are difficult to get and we are trying, we can’t give everyone free membership to every club and society as finance is an issue but we can manipulate things to deliver an improved more enjoyable college experience because seeing the response in the survey has shown us that C&S are important to your happiness.

All suggestions made are purely hypothetical suggestions and not indicative of current developments in C&S.